WHITNEY BALLEN – ” You’re A Shooting Star, I’m A Sinking Ship “

“It’s easy to get down on yourself / When you’re surrounded by people who don’t know what goes on in your head,” Whitney Ballen sings on the title track of her latest LP, You’re A Shooting Star, I’m A Sinking Ship. It’s the irony of existing in a world filtered through social media comparing real life to curated ones, and longing for validation that seems further away with every scroll of the touchscreen.

The album’s twelve tracks are set perfectly in Ballen’s Pacific Northwest, a place collectively pictured in a romantic mist that blots out its everyday banalities. Vocally, the Washingtonian shares space with the likes of Mirah, Laura Stevenson, and Jenny O. Describing her sound, “Imagine Joanna Newsom as a ghost, benevolently haunting a cabin in the woods, and you’ll get an idea… I love it. Her voice is so unique, this whispered sort of knife “It didn’t sound exactly like any one thing I had heard before, but still managed to feel comforting and familiar too. I think it was the many contrasts that drew me in and made me want to share this album with everybody else.”

I’m not from the Pacific Northwest and maybe people rhyme “Mount Rainier” and “wish you were here” all the time, but it knocked me over here, on this beautiful track from Whitney Ballen’s You’re A Shooting Star, I’m A Sinking Ship.

“Mount Rainier tends to show itself on the days we need it most here, at least for me it does,” Whitney, who’s from Washington, says. “It’s a casual reminder of the things that linger in an ever-changing world. Rainier was the view from an ex’s dining room window (before it was sold for condos), where the housemates would sit and drink crafted coffee most mornings. When things go away friends, mothers, fathers, houses, partners — we find and hold onto memories through the most mundane things. Luckily, Rainier is still here.”

Well, I'm dyslexic so writing about something I love: Music, might help but it's most likely just full of mistakes. That title is also lyrics from The Drones song called I Don't Want To Change. Oh, my name is William and thanks for having a look.